Luzhin remained sitting in the dining room and continued from time to time to slap himself on the knees. And there was really something to celebrate. The combination he had been struggling to discern since the ball, had suddenly revealed itself to him, thanks to a chance phrase that had come flying out of the next room. During these first minutes he had still only had time to feel the keen delight of being a chess player, and pride, and relief, and that physiological sensation of harmony which is so well known to artists.
He still made many more small motions before he realized the true nature of his unusual discovery—finished his cocoa, shaved, transferred his studs to a clean shirt. And suddenly the delight vanished and he was overcome by other sensations. Just as some combination, known from chess problems, can be indistinctly repeated on the board in actual play—so now the consecutive repetition of a familiar pattern was becoming noticeable in his present life.
And as soon as his initial delight in having established the actual fact of the repetition had passed, as soon as he began to go carefully over his discovery, Luzhin shuddered. With vague admiration and vague horror he observed how awesomely, how elegantly and how flexibly, move by move, the images of his childhood had been repeated (country house … town … school … aunt), but he still did not quite understand why this combinational repetition inspired his soul with such dread.
He felt one thing keenly: a certain vexation that he had gone so long without noticing the cunning sequence of moves; and now, recalling some trifle—and there had been so many of them, and at times so skillfully presented, that the repetition was almost concealed—Luzhin was indignant with himself for not having reflected, for not taking the initiative, but with trustful blindness letting the combination unfold.
But now he resolved to be more circumspect, to keep an eye on the further development of these moves, if there was to be one—and of course, of course, to maintain his discovery in impenetrable secret, to be merry, extraordinarily merry. But from that day on there was no rest for him—he had, if possible, to contrive a defense against this perfidious combination, to free himself of it, and for this he had to foresee its ultimate aim, its dire direction, but this did not yet appear feasible.
And the thought that the repetition would probably continue was so frightening that he was tempted to stop the clock of life, to suspend the game for good, to freeze, and at the same time he noticed that he continued to exist, that some kind of preparation was going on, a creeping development, and that he had no power to halt this movement.
Perhaps his wife would have noticed the change in Luzhin sooner, his wooden jollity between intervals of sullenness, had she been with him more these days. But it so happened that it was precisely during these days that she was taken advantage of, as had been promised, by the importunate lady from Russia—who forced her to spend hours taking her from store to store, and unhurriedly tried on hats, dresses and shoes, and then paid the Luzhins prolonged visits.
She continued to maintain as before that there was no theater in Europe and to pronounce “Leningrad” (instead of “Petersburg”) with cold glibness, and for some reason Mrs. Luzhin took pity on her, accompanied her to cafés and bought her son, a fat, gloomy little boy deprived of the gift of speech in the presence of strangers, toys which he accepted fearfully and unwillingly, whereupon his mother affirmed that there was nothing here that he liked and that he yearned to return to his little co-Pioneers.
She also met Mrs. Luzhin’s parents, but unfortunately the conversation about politics did not take place; they reminisced about former acquaintances, while Luzhin silently and concentratedly fed chocolates to little Ivan, and Ivan silently and concentratedly ate them, and then turned deep red and was hastily led out of the room. Meanwhile the weather got warmer, and once or twice Mrs. Luzhin said to her husband that once this unfortunate woman with her unfortunate child and unpresentable husband had finally left, they should go the very first day, without putting it off, and visit the cemetery, and Luzhin nodded with an assiduous smile.
The typewriter, geography and drawing were abandoned, for he knew now that all this was part of the combination, was an intricate repetition of all the moves that had been taken down in his childhood. Ridiculous days: Mrs. Luzhin felt she was not paying enough attention to her husband’s moods, something was slipping out of control, and yet she continued to listen politely to the newcomer’s chatter and to translate her demands to shop assistants, and it was particularly unpleasant when a pair of shoes that had already been worn once turned out to be unsuitable, and she had to accompany her to the store while the purple-faced lady bawled out the firm in Russian and demanded the shoes be changed, and then she had to be soothed and her caustic expressions considerably toned down in the German version. On the evening before her departure she came, together with little Ivan, to say good-bye.
She left Ivan in the study while she went to the bedroom with Mrs. Luzhin who for the hundredth time showed her her wardrobe. Ivan sat on the couch and scratched his knee, trying not to look at Luzhin, who also did not know where to look and was thinking how to occupy the flabby child. “Telephone!” exclaimed Luzhin finally in a high voice, and pointing to it with his finger he began to laugh with deliberate astonishment. But Ivan, after looking sullenly in the direction of Luzhin’s finger, averted his eyes, his lower lip hanging. “Train and precipice!” tried Luzhin again and stretched out his other hand, pointing to his own picture on the wall.
Ivan’s left nostril filled with a glistening droplet and he sniffed, looking apathetically before him. “The author of a certain divine comedy!” bellowed Luzhin, raising a hand to the bust of Dante. Silence, a slight sniffing. Luzhin was tired by his gymnastic movements and also grew still. He began to wonder whether there was any candy in the dining room or whether to play the phonograph in the drawing room, but the little boy on the couch hypnotized him with his mere presence and it was impossible to leave the room. “A toy would do it,” he said to himself, then looked at his desk, measured the paper knife against the little boy’s curiosity, found that his curiosity would not be roused by it, and began in despair to burrow in his pockets.
And here again, as many times before, he felt that his left pocket, although empty, mysteriously retained some intangible contents. Luzhin thought that such a phenomenon was capable of interesting little Ivan. He sat down on the edge of the couch beside him and winked slyly. “Conjuring trick,” he said and started by showing that the pocket was empty. “This hole has no connection with the trick,” he explained.
Listlessly and malevolently Ivan watched his movements. “But nevertheless there is something here,” said Luzhin rapturously and winked. “In the lining,” snorted Ivan, and with a shrug of his shoulders turned away. “Right!” cried Luzhin, miming delight, and thrust one hand through the hole, holding on to the bottom of the jacket with his other one. At first some kind of a red corner came into view, and then the whole object—something in the shape of a flat leather notebook. Luzhin looked at it with raised brows, turned it around in his hands, pulled a little flap out of its slit and cautiously opened the thing.
It was not a notebook, but a small, folding chessboard of morocco leather. Luzhin immediately recalled that it had been given to him at a club in Paris—all the participants in that tournament were given this knickknack—some firm’s advertisement, not simply a souvenir from the club. Lateral compartments on both leaves of this pocket board contained little celluloid pieces resembling fingernails and each one bore the picture of a chess figure. These were placed in position on the board by inserting the pointed end into a tiny crack at the lower edge of each square so that the rounded top of the piece with the drawn figure on it lay flat on the square.
The effect was very elegant and neat—one could not help admiring the little red and white board, the smooth celluloid fingernails, and also the stamped gold letters along the horizontal edge of the board and the golden numbers along the vertical one. Opening his mouth wide with pleasure, Luzhin began to slip in the pieces—at first just a row of Pawns along the second rank—but then he changed his mind, and with the tips of his fingers taking the tiny, insertable figures out of their compartments, he set out the position of his game with Turati at the point where it had been interrupted.
This setting out was accomplished
